New Shark Species emerging from the deep 2023

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Here, we will discuss newly identified shark species that have been found as a result of humanity’s increasing ocean exploration. A mystery that begins with an involved egg. Scientists in Australia discovered a special type of “mermaid purse” in 1989, a leather egg case that some sharks use to lay eggs instead of giving birth. An almost unique feature of hollow eggshells is a row of prominent ridges along the top. A few hundred kilometers off Australia’s northeast coast, in the East Timor Sea, near a complex of atolls known as Rowley Shoal, is where the eggs were discovered.

New shark species

After more than 30 years, researchers have finally answered the most basic question, leading to the discovery of an entirely new species of shark. The ocean’s most spectacular hunters are still being discovered by humanity more than two decades into the twenty-first century. As recently as the mid-1980s, science had narrowed the number of shark species down to about 360. These species range from deep-sea feathered species such as the 20cm-long pygmy lantern shark ( 8 in) to the giant whale shark, the largest fish in the oceans and a food source for plankton. But this number has increased by about 40% in just over 40 years. More than 500 species have been identified and the rate of discovery of new species is unabated.

This most recent explosion of discovery is comparable to the golden age of discovery. It is a byproduct of meticulous research into the archives of museum collections as well as the study of deep waters around the world. Consider the shark that created the mysterious, ridged eggshells. The team making the connections included Will White, senior curator of the Australian National Fish Collection at CSIRO in Hobart, Australia. The egg cartons were distributed to the museum’s archives after being found during a survey at Rowley Shoals, with few people paying attention to the box’s distinctive moldings.

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While volunteering at the Western Australian Museum in Perth in 2011, a researcher named Brett Human discovered a ridged shark egg case. Although the eggs resemble those of another shark species, that shark has never been discovered in Australian waters. Humans have constrained this species as a likely catfish by connecting the eggshell to other eggs that have been discovered in Australia. But he could not identify the exact species. It turns out that in the 1980s, CSIRO also received samples of egg cases, but no one conducted further investigations.